Posts from: June 30, 2009

Published on June 30, 2009 by Scott Gould

A Sonnet To Google Wave

Lars Rasmussen, Google WaveI love Lars. I also love Google Wave.

So when I went to sign up for a beta invite, and I was wondering what quirky thing to write to heighten my chances of getting an invite sooner, I saw that “Haikus, sonnets and ASCII art all accepted”… “Wonderful!” Thought I, and after 5 minutes of creativity I had crafted my first piece of internet poetry.

So, here is my sonnet for Google Wave. Note that 1. I am indeed quite sad, and 2. if you watch the (excellent) developer preview video, you’ll actually understand what my sonnet is talking about, otherwise, it really does make no sense at all.

So without further a do, may I introduce you to…

“The Wave”, by Scott Gould.

Shall I compare thee to nineties email?
Thou flows more smoothly and far more pleasant.
What was yesterday, today is a fail,
And bean soup is easier than pheasant.
Some time too light my quick fingers do type,
And often are my words and sites unlinked,
Messy doc revisions, I do not like,
And too many tabs is too much to think.
But thy Yes/No saves a thousand replies,
Where Facebook would save me from none of them,
It’s not an app, it’s HTML 5,
Desktops are drowning cos you’ve out done them.
Now in real time with spellies and linkies,
Wave Dance into the two-thousand-teenies.

Can I get a beta invite now? ;-)

Published on June 29, 2009 by Scott Gould

Free Brand Seminar in Exeter, 15th July

I just got this from @albrooking :

RT @AlderandAlder: ‘What’s your brand & why is it valuable?’. Free #brand seminar in Exeter. 15 July. http://tinyurl.com/qnqbbl

I’d recommend any Exeter or in-the-area people and / or businesses to get along. It’s being run by local agency Alder and Alder.

If you know of any more local sessions happening (there are loads due over the summer – speak to @banksy6  and @Bluegrass_IT  for Social Media seminars which will blow your mind), then please comment them below.

In the mean time, get retweeting this, and get ready to get all branded up!

Published on June 28, 2009 by Scott Gould

That Certain Something Else

Portrait of Albert Einstein and Others (1879-1955), PhysicistIf you ever want to get inspired, watch any of the TED talks. It doesn’t matter which one I watch, I end up wanting to work with that person because their passion and drive emanates across the medium of video and touches the desires within me to cause change and transformation in this world.

When you listen to Pavarotti, when you watch Hamlet, when you hold an iPhone, see a photo of Rosa Parks, stand at the Washington Memorial, know a cancer survivor, or read about the death of a martyr, there is something else, something different about that person that separates them from average. Not that the average man and woman is devalued, but these people have gone through more than the average allocation of pressure to stand tall in the pages of someone’s history.

Published on June 25, 2009 by Scott Gould

Introducing Mrs. Gould

CinderellaIt’s hard to know where to start. If I started from the beginning, I wouldn’t finish. But if I don’t say how it began, then you won’t know just how precious she is.

I guess I’ll start with the vital statistics. A praying woman. Blonde bombshell. A very insightful wife. A Youth worker and number-two at Women In Touch. She’s also tall, which is great when you’re 6′ 3″ yourself. Also, she’s the holder of my heart and companion of my life.

I met Faye when she was 15 at a prayer meeting. I remember thinking “wow, she can pray” – unfortunately a rather rare thing among Christians today. It wasn’t long before I became very (*very*) fond of her and started writing poetry about her in secret. On August 27th 2003 we started dating. We were engaged a year later, and married on 25th June 2005, which as of writing, is 4 years ago today. So, happy anniversary sweetheart! (P.S. You can see wedding and honeymoon photos on flickr)

Faye is an outstanding woman. First of all, she’s a smart cookie. She excelled at college and university (she has a 1st) despite being dyslexic. She’s employed by the The Ivy Project, Devon County Council and V Involved, where she waves to her targets as she passes them by every quarter. Her work with the young people at Ivy, as well as the detached youth work she does two evenings a week, are a joy to her. It’s a funny thing to watch your English Rose go from cream tea and Paul Smith to relating with teenagers from disadvantaged backgrounds and talk their language. But that’s the woman I’ve married and I love it.

It’s the same passion and desire to help people that drives her at Women In Touch – the Women’s ministry that operates out of our church. I am astounded how, after working in a target driven youth organisation, she can then come and work (as a volunteer) at WIT and manage their yearly Touch Conference. This year they are giving away a car, have 200 ladies coming from around the Country and Europe, and are running at a budget twice the size of last year.

She always jokes that as a husband, I need to “upgrade” every quarter to stay up-to-date. But she is the one who continually reads, thinks, asks questions, and pushes herself to do more than she did last year. For every young man reading, this is the kind of wife Proverbs 31 talks about. And I encourage you not to settle for less. I was the first man Faye kissed – it seems out of date for many, but she has absolutely no regrets. She was the first and only serious relationship I’ve had.

Faye and I say that when you give God your best, He gives you the best, and this is never truer than it is today.

And you’ve got to know, she has a way about her. Like Billy Joel said,

She’s got a way about her, don’t know what it is, but I know that I can’t live without her…
She has a smile that heals me, don’t know what it is, but I have to laugh when she reveals me…
She comes to me when I’m feeling down, inpsires me without a sound…

“He who finds a wife finds a good thing” is what Proverbs says. And oh, how I have a good thing in Faye. What once was just a beautiful relationship, over 4 years has become an intimate, supportive and joy-bringing union.

So, my wife, I love you and thank God for you. To quote Jerry, “you complete me”. You’re my dulcissime.

Published on June 24, 2009 by Scott Gould

How GTD Rescued Me

I´ve Joined the CultJesus saved my soul. GTD saved my future. Really, it did.

When started working at church at 19 I had no office experience. And although in my melancholic, creative nature there is an obsessive and meticulous organiser within me, unfortunately I have historically had a nasty habit of never implementing a system because I could never get it ‘perfect’ enough.

From 19 through to 25, despite the public successes I had, the lack of organisation, mental clarity, and ability to lead and to delegate was killing me.

Let me paint the picture for you. I could start a massive youth initiative, but I couldn’t keep it organised. I could start a great TV programme, but I couldn’t continue running it after the start-up energy drained. I could sit and share great ideas, but couldn’t implement them. I could start many, many things, but I could never finish them.

It is a curse and a form of mental torment to have potential, be a thinking person, see beyond the normal things, but be hindered from getting what is in the nebulous of your potential within you, out of you.

Published on June 23, 2009 by Scott Gould

Lessons from the Exeter Twitterati

Al Banks from optixsolutions.co.ukOne of the greatest things about Exeter is the number of Twitter users. A search on Twellow.com yields a list of around 200 users which is pretty big for a city of Exeter’s size. And we’re not just any old bunch of 200 Twitter users – we have some really great people who are leading the social media scene in the South West of England.

Cue the photo above of Alastair Banks, modelling his iambanksy.co.uk mug. I met Al (@banksy6  to the initiated) over Twitter at the beginning of the year at roughly the same time as I met Adam Stone (@Rokkster ) – Director of Rokk Media. Had it not been for Twitter, I’d never have got to know Al, a Director at Optix Solutions, like I do now. I would never have called Optix and said “Hi, it’s Scott Gould here. I want to tell Al about my great marketing thought and what I had for lunch today”. Never. Wouldn’t happen.

Published on June 18, 2009 by Scott Gould

Early Memories of Design Fascination

Bow ViewI remember being in my first year at school and seeing a group of boys build a boat using Lego. “Idiots” I thought, as they built columns of the ships hull one brick directly on top of another. “They should crisscross them like they do with houses”.

Then the insult came: their boat was displayed during assembly because of how good it was. I was frustrated. Not angry, frustrated. Because in my mind, design had obvious principles for building better things – and surely everyone knew them. To not follow these golden rules of design was somehow a transgression against the very order of nature itself.

20 years later and I’m still the same, getting frustrated over bad design. If you’ve read a little about me, you’ll know that I have (as described above), an obsessive fascination for details, which my wife actually considers to be an acute form of OCD. When I sit down anywhere, I like to neatly arrange everything in a grid – whether it be knives and forks, computers, paper pads, or furniture that “clearly hasn’t been thought through”.